Martin Lee: Keeper Of The Flame

(The Crown Colony of Hong Kong):
Within a few hours of this writing,
thousands of Chinese troops will ride
armored personnel vehicles, helicopters
and warships to secure for communism its
first territorial acquisition since the
fall of the Berlin Wall — and arguably
its most precious ever: the
“lustrous pearl” of Hong Kong.

‘A New Dark Age’

The strategic import of this moment is
being deliberately overshadowed by the
forced gaiety of round-the-clock
“celebrations.” One cannot,
however, help but feel — surrounded by
the red-and-yellow banners, dragons,
lamps, flags and other regalia of the new
masters of Hong Kong — the alarm
experienced by those who saw Hitler’s
troops welcomed into Austria and the
Sudetenland with swastikas and brown
shirts.

The innumerable television cameras in
town to record the surrender seem largely
distracted by the pomp of various
ceremonies attended by high-ranking U.S.
officials and their counterparts from
other free nations. These foreign
representatives are content to mouth
platitudes about “orderly
transitions” and their
intentions to “hold the People’s
Republic of China accountable” for
preserving Hong Kong’s freedoms.

For their part, the leaders of
the PRC and the quislings they have
anointed to govern Hong Kong are only too
willing to play back what the West would
like to hear. “Two systems,
one country” is the mantra of the
day. This evidently is meant to convey
the idea that Hong Kong will be
“free” — free to be a
capitalist police-state along the lines
of Singapore. China will pursue its own
brand of “state capitalism”
with a less-than-human face.

It is already clear, however, that Hong
Kong will not be “free” in any
other sense of the word.
Everyone agrees that Asia’s most
vigorously independent press has already
begun to exhibit self-censorship, even
before China’s jackboots are present to
enforce the party-line. A gripping
example of the implications for freedom
of expression in Hong Kong of the
Beijing’s New Order was on display Sunday
when Szeto Wah, one of
the territory’s most respected and
courageous elected democrats, addressed a
group of Americans hosted by the
California-based Claremont
Institute. The woman hired to
translate his remarks from Chinese into
English appeared deliberately to sabotage
them by stumbling over, deleting or
otherwise misconstruing Mr. Szeto’s
words. Most infamously, she translated
one of his references to Beijing’s
increasing “control” in Hong
Kong as an “improvement.”

Enter Martin Lee

Fortunately, an exceptional command of
the English language permitted Martin
Lee, the most prominent
democratic leader in pre-PRC Hong Kong,
to address the Claremont group without
similar interference. He observed that even
those who believe that Hong Kong will be
free enough to make money are sadly
mistaken. Already, Hong Kongers
who lack guanxi
(“connections”) to Beijing’s
corrupt power structure are finding
themselves seriously disadvantaged in
business. What is more, those who do
have connections are increasingly
discovering that one day’s guanxi can
disappear the next; in the absence of the
rule of law, businessmen are finding
themselves at the losing end of China’s
wired system of “justice” and
— in some cases — in jail.

Mr. Lee argues persuasively, moreover,
that there can be no such thing in Hong
Kong as economic freedom without
political freedom. He declared, “If
you look at this pearl of the Orient,
freedom is the luster. There is no doubt
about that. If we lose the freedom, the
pearl loses its luster. It is a simple
message, a simple image, but this is what
Hong Kong is all about. The prosperity is
the effect of that freedom. So what do we
say, we want to be prosperous but you can
take away some of our freedom. These
people don’t even know what they are
talking about.”

The West’s ‘Contemptible’
Signals

Mr. Lee also observes that the
West is sorely mistaken if it believes
that empty rhetoric about preserving Hong
Kong’s freedom will actually be
sufficient to dissuade Beijing from
eviscerating it. A case in point
was the appalling, garbled message sent
first by the Clinton Administration and
then by the Blair government of Great
Britain concerning Beijing’s hand-picked
Provisional Legislature for Hong Kong. On
the one hand, Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, Prime Minister Blair
and his foreign minister, Robin Cook,
will properly boycott tonight’s
installation of this entity — an
organization comprised largely of
communist-sympathizers rejected at the
polls, which will supplant the elected
Legislative Council at midnight and
immediately begin revoking statutes put
in place in recent years to protect civil
liberties. On the other hand, both the
U.S. and U.K. will be represented by
their respective Counsels General at the
swearing-in ceremony. Emily Lau,
another leading Hong Kong democrat,
called this bizarre decision
“disgusting and contemptible.”

As Martin Lee put it: The U.S.
should stick to its position, no matter
how low it sets the bar, lest it
reinforce in the minds of the Chinese the
impression that the West does not mean
the more robust signals it is trying to
send. Unfortunately, the despots
of Beijing — who have systematically
violated any number of commitments made
under the 1984 Joint Declaration
with Britain that is supposed to govern
its conduct in Hong Kong after tomorrow
morning — already have ample reason to
believe that the West in general, and the
United States in particular, are
unserious about the future of freedom
here.

Freedom’s Flame

Fortunately, there are people like
Martin Lee whose seriousness about
freedom for the people of Hong Kong —
and the larger civilized world of which
it has been an important part until now
— cannot be denied. In a singularly
powerful expression of personal courage,
Mr. Lee told the Claremont Institute
audience last night:

“The most important factor
for the Chinese leaders is their
ability to remain in power. And
if they see their position as
jeopardized, they will stop at
nothing. Look at 1989. Before the
[Tiananmen Square] massacre,
China’s economy was doing
extremely well. Because the
Chinese felt that they were
insecure, they brought in the
tanks, the army and started to
shoot and kill and ruined China’s
economy for three years.

“So, of course, I don’t
think [such violence] will happen
[here], but how can I be sure? At
dawn, 4,000 Chinese troops will
descend upon us by sea, air and
land. Why must they do something
like that? It’s going to frighten
the Chinese people here — unless
it is intended, intended to
intimidate the Hong Kong people
into silence. But it
is not going to work on
me and my party.
[Rousing applause.]

“You see, we have a very
heavy burden on our shoulders. We
are people standing on the front
lines, elected politicians,
businesspeople, civil servants,
journalists. If any one of us
were to ask this question: ‘Now
that we are under Chinese rule,
what would happen to me if I were
to continue to criticize the
Chinese government or even Mr.
Tung Chee-hwa’s
[Chinese-appointed] government,
what would happen to me if I
write a story that were sensitive
and offend some of the Chinese
leaders, and certainly Mr. Tung?’
If you ask yourself that
question, chances are you won’t
do it, you won’t write it.

“If you ask yourself another
question, since I have been
saying these things all along,
since I have been writing these
articles all along under the
British rule, why can’t I do the
same thing under Chinese rule?
Our freedoms are supposed to
remain unchanged. If you ask
yourself that question, the
chances are you will do
it.

“Now, a lot of people are
watching us, but when the lights
of the ceremonies are turned off,
you see darkness. If you
have a candle and a box of
matches and you light it, if it’s
only one candle but it brings a
lot of brightness into the room.
And if the other people around
you also have a candle and they
light up theirs, you have a very
bright room. But if you then
begin to blow out yours and other
people flow your example and blow
out theirs, then before you know
it, darkness will descend into
this room.

“So, every time
those of us who stand in the
front lines have to make a
decision of that kind, we must
remember other people are
watching us. If we make the right
decision, I think many people
will follow us and take also the
right decision. If we
make the wrong decision, even
more people will follow us and
voluntarily give up our own
freedom.

“Whatever we do, we’re going
to start a snowball. Are we
starting a snowball of
self-restraint or are we starting
a snowball of self-confidence?
So, we will continue to
do exactly what we are doing
under British rule until we
are stopped.

“And then we will shout:
‘Why Mr. Tung?’ And I hope you
will join in the chorus: ‘Why Mr.
Tung?’; ‘Why Mr. Jiang Zemin?’ I
hope Mr. Clinton will put the
question to President Jiang
Zemin, ‘Why are you doing this?’

 

“Because if we don’t stand
firm, we will be giving up our
own freedom, we will be blowing
out the candles, even though
there is no wind.”
(Emphasis added throughout.)

The Bottom Line

Every American owes an enormous debt of
gratitude to such men as Martin Lee. They
are truly on the front lines of freedom.
Those like President Clinton who insist
that China is no longer communist or like
Madeleine Albright who advocate
engagement with Beijing seemingly at any
cost may be unable to appreciate how much
is riding on the continued personal
safety and visible public presence of
such Keepers of the Flame. There will,
however, be no clearer indication of the
real future of Hong Kong or of the
quality of the United States’ commitment
to liberty than whether Martin Lee and
his colleagues are allowed to keep their
candles burning brightly, no matter how
damning the reality they illuminate.

Make no mistake. This is a
defining moment for America. The
moral force and abiding truths of Martin
Lee’s message demands that we ask
ourselves the question: Are we going to
stand with Martin Lee and his brave
associates of the Democratic Party and
react forcefully when the trip-wires of
freedom are triggered by the
totalitarians?

Regrettably, the Chinese Communists
are counting on the Clinton
Administration and the majority of the
“business first” U.S. Congress
to follow past practice. If so, it would
seem a safe bet that the United States —
empty rhetorical warnings aside — will
look-the-other-way as Beijing crushes
Hong Kong’s freedoms, so long as the PRC
does so in a stealthful, incremental
fashion. Will they be proven right? Is
this what we have become as a people? If
so, then more than Hong Kong will
enter what Winston Churchill once termed
“a new dark age.”

For its part, the Center for
Security Policy will stand with Martin
Lee and not go quietly into the darkness.
We hope others will join this
“chorus,” keep freedom’s flame
burning bright and, in so doing, reaffirm
and renew our common birthright.

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